Alpine Loop gloriousness

It's been a busy couple of weeks here. I've gotten in lots of exercise (for those not reading my fat blog, I've lost over 40 pounds so far), seen some wonderful sights, had some bizarre dreams (last night there was some kind of weird communal shower where you stepped into this alcove and just lowered a partial door to cover your important bits. that way you could talk to people while you showered. weird! night before it was some kind of zombie revolution dream.).

Following are a bunch of pics from our recent trips up the canyon. We went twice to get different kinds of light - Brent likes having good pics for drawing reference.

Pool Party

It doesn't especially look like it here, but Amelia really liked this. It's a little jumpy chair in the splash pool for toddlers. She was leaning over the side and splashing in the water and sometimes would even dip her face in the water. It was really cute, but the only pic of her enjoying it was a really unfortunate picture of me. Brent is no professional when it comes to pictures of me. :) The kids both enjoyed floating in the water. We went on the lazy river a couple of times, with Felix exclaiming, "Mommy, I floating!" Amelia kicked a lot and held on tight to her life jacket. She didn't mind the water at all. In fact, I think she really liked it.
We went swimming on Saturday as the first part of a birthday party. It was very fun. After the swimming we went to Ian and Amy's house to celebrate Camlin turning 2. The second part was also very fun. Nice to hang out with them. :)

Productivity

I figured out a while back that I could only really be productive about once a week. That doesn't mean I won't get anything done the other six days, just that I will be super productive one day and struggle the rest.

It's good to know myself, I guess. I mean, if I know that only on one day will I accomplish much (I'm talking about cleaning and organizing - I can do errands any day), I can actually schedule that day ahead of time.

Last week a friend of mine (I call her a friend, but I'm pretty generous with that term) moved. Since I was her visiting teacher (pretty much a church assignment), I offered to help her out. I spent 3 days over at her house cleaning and packing, and then put on a giant yard sale for her. Of course, I took over a bunch of my own crap to sell too. The yard sale started on Friday and we made about $75. Not too much, but not bad either. Since this friend was leaving that night late, I gave her the whole amount, figuring I could keep what I made on Saturday.

I made about $165. Not bad.

Besides getting royally fried (Felix too, since he spent most of both days with me), the only real frustration was that most of the people who came were Mexicans. Normally I'd be super pleased with this, but it turns out they're cheap. I figured I was being pretty darn generous with pricing toys for 50 cents and clothes the same. There were very few things that I priced more, but they were nice. I had good crap! But man, those Mexicans would pick up a huge armful of stuff and offer me $1 for it. Stuff like that all day long.

My friend Darla came at the end of the day to take all my leftovers for her fund-raising yard sale next week. It was nice to not have to worry about taking it all to DI.

All-in-all, I think it'll be a long time before I do that again.

After everything was all cleaned up, I went to a friend's house for a girls night. There were 7 of us, and it was cleansing. Man, I love those girls.

So, it took a couple of days to get back into the swing of things, but today is a productive day again. I get so sick of the state of my house (like, it totally grosses me out) that I just have to do something about it. Thankfully, at the recommendation of a couple of insightful people, I have discovered Pandora. Hooray for free internet radio and NO COMMERCIALS!!!!